Tag: downtowncc

Last week a few preliminary designs for the downtown renovation project, formerly known as the "Nugget Economic Development Project", were unveiled. I hesitated to comment on them because normally I like to keeps things positive, I don't want to say anything bad. But these plans just leave me feeling cold all over and I can't stay quiet. This project is at a fork where it could either be really successful, or a fall-down flop. And they seem to be heading toward the road to Flopville.

First is the name. I didn't think it was possible to come up with a worse name than "Nugget Economic Development Project", but they did: "Carson City Center". It's a blah name that evokes a thousand other generic early century redevelopment projects, and in Nevada it's already associated with both a theme-free mega resort in Las Vegas, and a motel that's just two blocks away from the Nugget. Strip mall developers are able to come up with better names than this, and these people should be able to too if they spent more than 30 seconds on it.

But even worse are the designs that they put forward for the layout of the project. There are three different "designs", which it looks like they developed by having a two-year old move Legos around a board. All three designs are centered around tall, monolithic buildings separated by wide streets, and they vary only in the actual placement of the buildings. Like in grade school when you would have little paper cut outs of a couch, TV, and easy chairs, and use them to pretend to arrange furniture in your house. There's not a single thing about any of these designs that makes me think, "Hey, I want to go there." Instead I look at them and say, "How dreadful." Let's break them down.

We'll start off not with the "best"; let's call it the least bad. This design typifies much of the uninspired sameness that designers P3 Development were able to come up with. The eight block area is still split up into roughly 8 blocks, but at least in this design things are offset a little bit; that's what makes it the least bad. But it's still replacing street grid with street grid, replacing square parking lots with square buildings. This is not what we want to do. Points do go to this one for the large grassy area in front of the library. Some kind of park like setting is essential for this project. I also like the offset, and how Telegraph Street leads right into the front door of the library. I've said that Telegraph is the key to whatever gets built on this space, and should be treated as the entryway to this project from Carson Street. Putting the library here serves as a "weenie" to pull people in from the main street.

Between this design and the last one we're kind of skirting around a few good ideas that need to be explored more. This one loses the offset that I like, but it does incorporate the grassy area into the grounds of the Laxalt Building. Double extra points for recognizing Laxalt as one of the most awesome buildings downtown, and trying to incorporate it. They're just not doing it enough.

This one loses points, though, for relocating the library away from the park and shoving it into an office building. Housing takes the place of prominence at the far end of the park, which I don't think is the right way to go. In fact, all these designs have the housing as a separate Lego piece that keeps getting shoehorned into whatever empty space is left over. I think that's the wrong way to go, and if you want to reach for a true urban feel you need to make the housing more integrated. Like retail on the ground floor with residential above. People making a conscious choice to live downtown probably don't want to live in a Soviet style housing block.

Again, it's like they're shooting darts blindfolded and they just can't hit the bullseye. The library is back in the grassy area, but the Laxalt Building is disconnected again, and the offset is gone, making Telegraph a through street. This brings up one of the biggest problems I have with these designs; they're too car-heavy. Nobody drives through this part of town now unless they're looking for a parking space at the Nugget or the Capitol complex. And these plans do involve parking garages at either end, which is necessary if you're removing this much parking from the town, and expecting even more people to come to the area. But with the parking gone, the need for wide streets is gone too. And I would argue that there is no need for cars in this project at all.

We have a chance here to do something truly different, to tear out several blocks of existing street grid and start over. If we want to make this a destination we need to make it attractive, and that means making it walkable, making it human scale. There shouldn't be straight lines, there should be meandering spaces that pull you in. There shouldn't be narrow streets "so that sidewalks could be widened". There should be no streets at all. I know it's a radical concept, but maybe if people have to walk around this neighborhood they'll be more engaged with it and spend more time and money here.

I could be approaching this from the wrong angle, but I'm looking at this as a tourist destination as well as a downtown core. We want people to come to Carson City, and we want them to go downtown and not be disappointed. I think about all the towns I've been to, all the tourist areas, and nearly all of them involve getting out of your car and exploring on foot. Old Sacramento has tons of interesting shops and restaurants, and you really can't get a feel for the place unless you get out and walk. Car traffic is allowed here, but pedestrians definitely have the right of way. In Seattle the Pike Place Market and Seattle Center (home of the Space Needle) are large public areas, one a shopping center and the other a park, where you have to park your car and go by foot. San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf is another area that packs in the tourists, and you have to walk to get to it. Carson City could also learn something from theme park design, places that are specifically built to be people magnets. Right next door to Disneyland is the Downtown Disney shopping district, an outdoor mall that's entirely pedestrian. Also in Southern California is Universal's City Walk, a large area with movie theaters and shops and restaurants that people can go to and make a whole evening out of. Carson City doesn't have enough people to do anything on that kind of scale, but a smaller version of those places is what we should be looking at. Closer to home we have Heavenly Village at South Lake Tahoe, another prototype that Carson City should be trying to mimic.

Give people a reason to come downtown, give them something to do. make them feel like they can come down and spend five or six hours without getting bored, and this project will be a success. Making it a bunch of disparate parts that have no connection to each other, which is what these designs do, is a sure way to see the project fail. I just hope everyone wakes up and notices this before we go too far down the wrong path.

Look back at my post "Future of Downtown" from a few years ago for more complaints/hopes about Carson City's future.

The Carson City farmer's market is starting up again, and it's starting a little early this year. The big market at 3rd and Curry Streets that we've known for the last couple of years doesn't start until June 19th. But starting tomorrow, and for the next six weeks, there is an "Early Bird" mini market in the parking lot of the Carson Station casino. This will be a small affair, with just a handful of vendors present. And one of the major farmers won't even be there the first week, Lattin Farms from Fallon has had to cancel because of medical issues but hopefully they'll make it to future markets.

Tomorrow's market starts at 9am and runs until 1 in the afternoon. It's at the Carson Station casino, at 8th and Carson streets.

Looks like the old Burger King on south Carson, the one that just closed last month, already has found a new tenant. Today they were putting up signs that say "Coming Soon, Super Burrito". Super Burrito is a small Mexican food chain based out of Reno, with only two stores in Reno and Sparks. Looks like this will be their third.

I've never been to Super Burrito so I can't say how good the food is, or if this new place will be a permanent addition to Carson City. Has anyone out there partaken of a Super Burrito?

Update: Pictures of the signs they put up yesterday. Good to know I wasn't seeing things!

The Downtowner Motor Inn has had a rough few years. It was closed for a while to remove asbestos, they had their electricity shut off for not paying bills, they've been through bouts of tax evasion, foreclosure, a revolving door of new owners, along with a whole list of other problems and violations. Plus people like me calling for it to just be torn down and made into a park. Whoever owns it now must think the name is cursed, because the motel is no longer known as the Downtowner. It is now the "Back on Track Inn."

The name alludes to the V&T Railroad that used to run down Washington Street, just a few yards from the front door of the motel. And the old railroad depot which is still standing across the street. It could also refer to the fact that the owners want to fix the problems with the place and get it "back on track" to being a respectable lodging house.

But I doubt a name change is going to fix any of the problems. It's still ugly, it's still probably going to cater to long-term residents rather than tourists, and changing the name isn't going to repair the reputation. If the owners really want to get back on track and gain respect, this is just the first of many long steps to take.

Update: Kirk Caraway points out in the comments an article he wrote in the Nevada Appeal from June about the name change. I guess it just took them a while to make the signs. And I remember seeing that article, but I forgot about the name change as soon as I read that the new owner wanted to paint the motel fluorescent.

The Carson City downtown revitalization plan is still chugging along. The whole project is dedicated to making downtown a more attractive place to visit, both for tourists and for locals. In the past the planning has focused on Carson Street, and what to do after through traffic has been diverted to the new freeway. That included ideas to make Carson Street two lanes and making the sidewalks wider, making downtown more friendly to pedestrians and less friendly to cars. Also for the last couple of years attention has been paid to Curry Street, rebranding it as the "Curry Street Promenade" and scheduling events during the summer to bring people downtown. But now they're looking at what new construction should be in Carson City's future to entice people downtown.

The focus of the planning right now is on relocating the Carson City Library downtown, giving that organization the updated facilities it desperately needs while also making the library part of downtown, rather than the isolated island it is now. The Carson Nugget is working closely with the city on this, trying to create a public-private partnership that ends up benefiting everyone. Also involved is the Hop and Mae Adams Trust, established by the founders of the Nugget as a way to give back to the community. Both of the founders of the Nugget are deceased now, Hop in 2003 and Mae just a couple of weeks ago. She bequeathed much of her money into this trust that would be used to revitalize downtown Carson City, and that includes creating these partnerships between the casino and the town, and giving up much of the Nugget's vast sprawling parking lot to build a new civic center.

Over the years, as talk of reenvisioning Carson City has swirled around, I've always looked at the large Nugget parking lot as the obvious place for new development. Parking lots cover an astounding 8 blocks behind the Nugget, stretching from Musser to Robinson. Some of that is State parking for the Capitol and State Archive, but much of it is owned by the Nugget and is rarely full. Two years ago I wrote a huge post about the future of downtown, and pegged these parking lots as the ideal birthplace for Carson City's future.

The thing about good ideas is that everyone seems to have them at once, so now this week new plans have surfaced for how to use all that land. The parking that is there now would be sent to underground garages (I said above-ground garages), and all 8 blocks would be developed. The new library would be here, along with a large plaza, maybe a park, maybe a space for the ice rink, and also plenty of retail, office, and even residential space. The plan even has a website now, www.nevadasworkingcapital.com, with a lot of the ideas spelled out and even a bit of concept art. Some of the possibilities listed there:

• A third-millennium knowledge and discovery library
• A business & technology incubator center
• A digital media lab
• class A office space
• commercial / retail space
• residential, in-town housing
• IMAX Theater
• transit hub
• public plaza
• shared de-centralized parking

How much of this will actually end up downtown remains to be seen. The city isn't going to be building most of it themselves, what they're trying to do is plant seeds and get private developers excited about the possibilities downtown holds. You've got to get shopkeepers and restaurants to want to open up downtown, and to drive all this you have to get Carson City residents thinking of downtown as a place to go on the weekend and kill a few hours.

It's a lot of work to get there from here, but there are the beginnings of all of it to be seen. Downtown already has several good restaurants, like B'sghetti's, Firkin and Fox, the Basil, and Kim Lee's. Drive by Comma Coffee most nights, and you'll see people spilling out onto the sidewalk. And of course the Nugget is one of the most popular casinos in town, and the reason they're behind this partnership is because they know bringing more people to downtown will only benefit their business.

But there's a lot to overcome, starting with an economy where the city can barely pay the bills they have now, much less go on a building spree. There are already a lot of empty storefronts downtown as it is, and adding new space when you can't fill the space you have isn't a great idea. For every B'sghetti's you have someplace like CaiE's Oriental Cafe, where hype doesn't lead to customers and the business fails. Plus, let's face it, much of downtown Carson City is just ugly, and the facades clash with each other. Downtown is not an attractive place right now, except for a few pockets, and that's one of the biggest obstacles to these plans. Luckily the plans involve beautification projects.

So there's a lot up in the air right now, and where it will all land is anybody's guess. It seems too good to be true for all of it to come to be. And I think downtown Carson has too many problems that can't be overcome completely, and will never be the kind of downtown other cities have. A couple of months ago we found ourselves in downtown Concord, California, and in Todos Santos Plaza. This is a grassy public park that takes up an entire block right in the heart of downtown, ringed with a mix of historic and new buildings. The whole area was incredibly vibrant, with restaurants, stores, office space, lots of pedestrians and popular enough that there was no parking to be found. The park had a large playground, and kids were out playing well past their bedtime. Ours included. It's the kind of place that Carson really can never have, because it can't be planned, it has to grow organically. I don't think we have the population necessary to support it either. So downtown Carson has the potential to be a lot better than it is now, but there are limits to how great it can be.

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

The Firkin and Fox Pub is now on Flickr. At first they've only put up pictures from around the restaurant, but maybe as time goes on they'll put up photos of their employees, their regular customers, and the events that happen on Third Street right outside the restaurant.

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

Photo by Flickr user The Firkin & Fox | Carson City, NV

The Firkin and Fox is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Some photos from Saturday's farmers market on 3rd Street.

This story is a few days old, but according to News Carson City the Arlington Square ice skating rink was a big money pit for everybody involved last winter. The ticket sales they took in came nowhere close to covering the costs of operating it, and the benefit to downtown businesses was probably pretty negligible. I guess Carson doesn't have enough people to make something like that a big draw, but at the same time it's so big that downtown isn't really the "heart of town" like it would be in a smaller town. We're kind of in that middle grey area. where a town is just big enough for downtown to mostly be irrelevant. That's a big challenge facing the efforts to revitalize downtown.

The final bottom line on the Carson City skating rink is $130,000 in red ink, so it's doubtful that we'll see the rink back next year.

There was an article in Tuesday's paper (not available online) that outlines the latest developments in the saga of the Downtowner Motor Inn. James DiMartino, who bought the motel at auction February 10, finally was able to take ownership of the place after getting a court to evict the previous owner, Ralph Ahmad. Under Ahmad's ownership recently both electric service and trash pickup had been discontinued due to the failure to pay bills. The motel was also closed from 2005 to 2007 while asbestos and mold abatement was carried out, but apparently not much renovation went on during that time. The new owner says the place is in a shambles and needs new carpeting, new furniture, and new heating and AC.

The biggest news in the story is that now that the new owner has taken over, he's served an eviction notice to all the residents. The people living in the motel, pretty much all of which live there long-term, need to be out by April 18th. After that the motel will be closed, remodeled, and sold again. What happens after that is still to be seen. Who will buy it? What will they do? Will it reopen as long-term residences? Will it be torn down? Will it be fixed up and marketed to tourists? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Downtown Carson City is featured today at Viewliner Ltd., with pictures from my Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection.